Indian politics is no joke | Politics

Two months after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) spread across India, its followers have entered dangerous territory. Police forcefully removed former CJP teacher Sonam Wangchuk from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar auditorium, and took her to hospital involuntarily on the 21st day of her indefinite strike.

Protesters joined the venue as CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke went on hunger strike. The protests are set to go to India’s Parliament on Monday to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the leak of university entrance exams that have sparked national outrage and the failure to respond to India’s competitive exams. There They are also mobile on the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The CJP came under fire in May after speaking to Chief Justice Surya Kant where he called the unemployed youth “cockroaches”, sparking outrage across the country. Since then, the “party” has gained a lot of attention on the Internet among the youth of India and staged huge demonstrations.

Before Saturday’s escalation, the government’s response was not accommodation or outright interference but restraint: allowing protests within limited limits, controlling their reach and waiting for the coalition to dissolve. Now it seems that the CJP has disappointed those in power.

It seems impossible to treat CJP as another viral storm in India’s overcrowded and volatile politics, as a shameless youth outfit born on social media, briefly seen on the street and destined to disappear as quickly as it appeared. The storm has traveled a long distance because it has mentioned the common opinion among people.

Being called a cockroach is being told that someone is dirty, betrayed and unattractive. The fringe is an ugly, funny, unchanging creature. It is despised, difficult to kill and lives in the places of respectable people. It survives poison, darkness and disgust. It looks like the house is not as clean as the owners say.

For many of India’s youth, especially those facing unemployment, exam paper leaks and rising costs, the scandal took away what they once had. CJP turned shame into form. If that’s how power sees us, they said, let’s speak in that name. Insult became a badge worn with pride. This is not political change. It is sad, even shameful, because the cockroach represents India where the dream of going to heaven has been dashed.

“Cockroach politics” emerged at a time when Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is running a dangerous election machine with many elements, ideological views and the ability to convert the welfare state, the Hindu nation and the opposition divisions into votes.

Yet the BJP’s position is still, ironically, very minority. In the 2024 general election, the party won the support of more than a third of the voters nationwide. In contrast, two-thirds of those who voted did not approve of the BJP’s election, led by Modi.

The power of governance is not based on the majority but on integration: regional and class alliances, opposition and division, and the narrowing of India’s third sector between the two national parties.

The CJP emerged at a time when electoral politics seemed stable from above but unreliable from below. Young people are angry about joblessness and failed exams. He is re-entering politics at a time when the democratic channels for expressing public anger – parties, elections, the media and independent organizations – appear to be at risk of collapse.

Then there is wealth.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the Indian economy to collapse, more than 800 million Indians depend on government food. For many poor people, food aid ends hunger, makes families happy and makes government visible in everyday life.

Beneath the welfare state, however, it does not reflect social cohesion. It shows the failure to deal with structural problems that appear during the epidemic.

On the other hand, the economy is very stable. The top 1 percent of people say they have a lot of money and no wealth, which is not seen in India in the past 100 years. This was no accident. It refers to the current political economy: welfare at the bottom, control at the top and the middle, plagued by growing unemployment and restricted ideas.

India has expanded school education and higher education, but it has not created a dignified, sustainable career for those who have promoted it. Educated youth in particular face these contradictions. They have been brought up to believe in acceptable mobility, but wealth provides crumbs of comfort.

This is why paper leaks, delays in work and cancellation of exams lead to great anger. Exams are not just exams. For middle-class families, it’s a bet on group travel. Parents save, borrow, sell real estate and pay the bills so the child can get a respectable job.

After the test, the betrayal is intimate. The government has not only failed to provide the exams but also mocked the sacrifices of millions of families.

This is why the symbol of the cockroach carries so much weight. It speaks to those caught between desire and contempt: the graduate without a job, the small business owner forced between taxes and weak interests, the gig worker who is always online but insecure and the student who knows that a loose paper can waste years of preparation. Mpheteme is a citizen who survives without being given credit for living.

The Modi era managed to turn around elections without reconciliation. It did not answer the question that plagues millions of young Indians: What future do foreigners have as heirs, sovereigns or international migrants?

The CJP cannot answer that question. It is too weak, too open, too vulnerable to the forces it defies. His disagreement is his truth. It does not represent so much the arrival of a new party as the exhaustion of old political languages. A joke that goes so far should not be a group revealing malaise. It doesn’t have to defeat the BJP or express good ideas to have political significance.

That is the deep meaning of cockroach politics. The spirit of democracy survives but in a diminished form. It sounds rude because ordinary words feel stifled. It looks like a meme because organized politics looks scary. It laughs because humor in dark times is the last form of bravery.

Cockroach is, to the chagrin of keyboard warriors, no revolutionary hero. It is a humble creature that looks like the house is not as clean as the owners say.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.